As information based industries constitute an ever growing part of national economics in many developed as well as developing countries, telecommunication networks have become an essential part of national infrastructure. Especially in developed economies, industries as well as societies are highly dependent on faster and easier access to information, entertainment, and education via the telecommunications networks. Optical fiber communication networks are among the fastest growing and very important part of communication networks that allow telecommunication companies to meet the ever growing need for more information, at faster speeds, by the consumers.
In a typical communication network providing services to consumers, a telecommunication service company may have a fiber optic cable installed at an end consumer's premises, where the end consumer may be a single residential unit, a multi-residence unit, a business, etc. Such an arrangement is often referred to as the fiber to the premises (FTTP). A typical FTTP is implemented by means of an optical network termination (ONT) device mounted on the exterior of the customer premises. Typically, the telecommunication service companies connect an optical cable to a network interface device (NID) installed outside the customer's premises wherein the NID hosts the ONT. However, a NID that is installed outside of a customer's premises is generally considered to be the property of the service provider, and therefore, the service provider becomes responsible for not only the cost of the NID but also the maintenance of the NID. When an NID is located outside of a customer's premises, it is exposed to weather elements such as rain, snow, cold, sun, heat, etc., and often the NID can require high levels of environment control, incurring high maintenance costs.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example implementation of a telecommunications network 10 using the FTTP service. The telecommunications network 10 may include an optical communications equipment (OCE) such as an optical line terminal (OLT) 12 that may be used to interconnect with one or more networks. Such networks may include the Internet 14, a public switched telephone network 16, and other networks 18, such as a wireless network, a satellite network, etc. The OLT 12 may be connected to such one or more networks 14-18 using fiber optic cables 20.
The OLT 12 may be located at the central office (CO) of a telecommunication company or at the head-end of a cable company. The OLT 12 may be used to generate synchronous optical networking (SONET), dense wavelength digital multiplexing (DWDM), or other signals appropriate for communication over fiber optics and communicate such signals over to optical network units (ONU) 22, to optical termination equipment such as optical network terminals (ONT) 24, to a splitter 26, etc. Alternatively, the OLT 12 may receive such signals from various networks 14-16 via the fiber optics 20 and route such signals over to the ONUs 22, the ONT 24, and the splitter 26.
The ONUs 22 are used to provide optical to electrical and electrical to optical conversion in a “fiber to the curb” (FTTC) or “fiber to the neighborhood” (FTTN) scenario. On the other hand, the ONTs 24 are used to terminate a fiber optic line, to de-multiplex the signal into its component parts (voice telephone, television, Internet, etc.), and to provide power to customer telephones. The output from the ONTs 24 may be fed into network interface devices (NIDs) 30 that are used to provide connectivity to a home based network 32, an office based network 34, etc.
It is important to ensure that the communicative interconnections provided by the NIDs 30 are robust as well as properly insulated from interferences. Generally, NIDs 30 may be implemented to host a number of different communicative paths, such as an optical cable connection, a DSL cable connection, etc. Any bad interconnection at the NIDs 30 may cause signal interference from one or more of such interconnections to the other interconnections. Moreover, the NIDs 30 may also be connected to a power supply and any faulty interconnections may expose the NIDs 30, as well as the premises where the NIDs 30 are located, to potential hazards caused by improper connection of power lines to one or more devices in the NIDs 30. Such potential problems with NIDs 30 are exaggerated by the fact that NIDs 30 located outside the premises may become exposed to various environmental conditions, such as rain, temperature swings, etc. Especially when the NIDs 30 are hosting any type of optical cables or optical interconnecting devices, it is necessary that such environmental effects are sufficiently controlled.
As discussed above, under this example implementation of the telecommunications network 10 and where any NID is located outside the customer's premises, the NID and the ONT are considered to be the property of the telecommunications service provider. As a result, the service provider generally becomes responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the NID and ONT. Such maintenance may become expensive, especially when the equipment is subjected to harsh weather conditions. Therefore there is a need for a solution that allows a telecommunications service provider to reliably manage the equipment installed outside of the customer premises.